CNET Search Show Best Conversions for Consumer Electronics Sites

In a independent study of millions of visits to Web sites selling consumer electronics and gift items, WebSideStory, Inc. ( www.WebSideStory.com ), today announced that from May-October 2003, visitors from CNET.com’s search engine had the best visit-to-order conversion ratio. CNET’s conversion ratio was 28% higher than the conversion rate from the next most efficient search engine.

CNET topped the list with 1.64 % of all visitors converting to immediate orders, followed by AOL (1.28 percent), Overture (1.25 percent) and iWon (1.15 percent), according to the new study by WebSideStory’s StatMarket ( www.StatMarket.com ), a leading authority on global Internet user trends. The data for the study is based on more than 10 million search engine visits to prominent e-commerce sites, which sell a broad range of gifts and electronics products and services.

These sites use WebSideStory’s HitBox Web analytics services. “StatMarket has always been a leading source of reliable data on the quantity of visitors that search engines refer to other sites globally,” said Geoff Johnston, vice president product marketing for StatMarket. “This new study focuses on the quality of the visitors the search sites are delivering.”

The data on visitors to electronics related sites is part of a larger study on visit-to-order conversion ratios from search engines to e-commerce sites overall. The full study from StatMarket analyzes more than 29 million visits from hundreds of search engines worldwide to dozens of prominent e-commerce sites. The search engine visits include those generated by both paid search keywords and organic listings. All orders resulting from search engine visits were generated in the same session. The study does not include shopping-specific search engines.